Brandingfor Social Change

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“You see us as you want to see us — in the simplest terms, and the most convenient definitions.”

— Brian Johnson, “The Breakfast Club,” 1985

Branding for Social Change

A from Vanguard Communications

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These core values drive the talented staff of Vanguard Communications, an award-winning, Hispanic woman-owned public relations and social marketing firm that focuses exclusively on communicating for social change.

Vanguard specializes in communication initiatives that educate the public, change perceptions and behavior, affect public policy, and ultimately protect the health and well-being of all of our neighbors. Our approaches are research-based, collaborative and culturally inclusive. Since 1987, Vanguard has made change happen for some of the nation’s leading nonprofits, foundations and government agencies working in critical issue areas such as mental health, energy and environment, health and wellness, youth and families, food and agriculture, and education.

Learn more about how we’re making social change at www.vancomm.com.

Join our social change conversation on Twitter (@VanComm), Facebook (www.facebook.com/vancomm) and Pinterest (www.pinterest.com/vancomm).

Why purple?

At Vanguard, we are passionate about righting wrongs, fighting injustice and achieving social change. We’re also pretty fond of … purple. Our

series captures our purple passion and transforms it into accessible, user-friendly advice for fellow communicators who are working toward the same societal goals. Each paper is not intended to be an in-depth report or a compendium of research. are simple tools for sharing knowledge, seeding innovation and empowering change makers.

Our first explored a topic that sends many communicators running for the hills: evaluation. Evaluating Social Change followed the same approach we’re applying to branding. We broke evaluation down into simple terms and a DIY process that we think you will find accessible and easy to implement. At least that’s our hope!

Innovation. Passion. Integrity. Quality.

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Acknowledgments

Engaging communities is a core tenet of social marketing and one that we embrace in all of our work at Vanguard. In developing Branding for Social Change, our writing team — composed of Deanna Troust, Brandi Horton, LeAnne DeFrancesco and Cyndi Fernandez — collaborated with Shani R. Lewis, a graduate student in the Department of Public Communication at American University.

We look forward to continuing to collaborate with communicators in the field and those working to better our communities through social change. You have as many ideas and answers as we do, and over the next 365 days or so, we’re going to keep the branding conversation going through our blog, in-person events, social media and online.

Share your thoughts about branding for social change with us on Twitter (@VanComm #PLPR). With the power of knowledge on our side, we can all communicate for a better world.

We can’t wait to hear from you.

Citing This Paper

At Vanguard, we’re really good at sharing, and hope the combination of facts and fun in this paper will compel you to share as well.

If you choose to cite us, please use the following attribution:

Troust, D., Horton, B., DeFrancesco, L., Fernandez, C., & Lewis, S. (2013). Branding for Social Change. Vanguard Communications .

Why Brand? 3

Branding — The Starting Point 8

The making of a strong brand 10

defining touchstones 12

Flying your flagship high 13

Positioning yourself well 13

What’s there to say about it all anyway? 15

Finding your identity 16

Branding Applied 20

Putting It All Together: A Kick Off Questionnaire 28

Some Parting Advice 28

References 30

Contents

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Branding: It’s the new black. Everyone wants to do it, or at least thinks it should be done. There are tons of branding resources out there — even tools and processes that are trademarked. That’s some fancy stuff!

With brand mantras, narratives, manifestos, platforms and more, the discipline has more buzzwords than a spelling bee. In the end, this amounts to a lot of confusion over what branding really is and what it can do for you.

What’s more, for nonprofits and government agencies, when you say “branding” you may get raised eyebrows in response — or a sheepish look, as if the whole process sounds expensive and complicated. Because branding is just for the Nikes and Apples of the world, right?

“Our new CEO hates

that logo.”

“I’m working on how my organization looks and sounds

on Facebook and Twitter.”

“got approval on the new campaign.

Now, what do we call it?”

“I know those people are an

important audience, but we’re just

not on their radar screen.”

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Actually, no.

Branding is just as important for an entity whose mission is to save the world as it is for one focused on shareholder value. This attempts to sort through the terms and tools to explore what branding is and how it can contribute to a successful plan for social change.

It’s possible that when you read this paper, you’ll disagree with parts of it. You may find yourself thinking,“Wait, in business school we learned that there are three components to branding, not six ... something about the emotional and the rational ….”And that’s OK. We don’t claim to be the experts in this pursuit; we’re just helping to sift through and simplify it somewhat for busy communicators.

As we unpack the branding process, we hope you’ll agree with us that there are a few notions that always ring true — kinda like high school archetypes. Remember those iconic characters in the classic ’80s film “The Breakfast Club”? We’ve asked around and found that they still resonate today; even those born post-1985 know that movie and can quote it at will. What is the secret to its continued relevance and appeal, 30 years later?

Our hunch is that it’s because the personal brands the film explored still live on: The princesses, the brains, the athletes and so on are roaming high schools nationwide.

In case you’re not familiar with the film, “Breakfast Club” writer/director John Hughes took a collection of personality labels, dressed them up, put them together in the Shermer High School library for a Saturday detention session and let them fight it out.

And fight they did, with each other and even with themselves.

Sound like a branding exercise you’ve been through?

As communicators and brand students, it’s a bit more palatable to swallow the ins and outs of concepts like “brand promises” when you can relate them to people … and cinema. So please indulge the movie references throughout this paper.

The bell has rung and Shermer detention monitor Mr. Vernon has issued his assignment: Who do you think you are?

Who do you think you are?

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Why Brand?

Before you can get people to buy into your mission … before you can get people to donate … before you can build a community around an issue, you have to put yourself out there. Make some introductions; strengthen connections. But keep your story straight — you can’t present yourself as one thing today and another thing tomorrow. Breaking up is hard to do, but people do it every day with organizations whose brands are inconsistent.

Let’s take a step back and examine what branding is, just so there’s no confusion later.

A brand is more than just a logo. It’s a promise.

Pop quiz: When you saw the word branding, did a logo come to mind immediately?

It’s OK, you can be honest. You think the brand is all about the logo. Trust us, we understand. The Golden Arches mean burgers, fries and a “gajillion sold.” In fact, a logo is what most people think of when they hear the term “branding” because it’s the most visible element (McNamara, 2011).

But if you answered “yes,” we’re here to tell you there is a little more to the story. A brand actually goes far beyond a logo. A definition we like is that a brand is “a psychological construct held in the minds of all those aware of the branded product, person, organization, or movement” (Kylander, 2011).

Let’s look at Sesame Street. It’s an iconic fixture in our society that is valued for its loving characters and educational content. Its logo has little to do with the brand’s endurance — the program’s ability to consistently evolve and remain relevant to children generation after generation is what makes it beloved (Fisch, 2001).

That’s not to say the brand identity — the visual component (logo, tagline, color palette and official typefaces) — don’t matter. They do! An awful lot! But we’ll get into that later.

In actual practice, we find it simplest and clearest to communicate a brand as a promise an organization makes to its constituents.

At its core, branding is about figuring out what that promise is, communicating it and delivering on it consistently via programs and services.

Because reputation is everything, isn’t it? Want to change the world? Great! Let’s do it!

Wait — who are you again? Exactly.

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Think about “The Breakfast Club” princess Claire Standish (played by Molly Ringwald). What if she showed up in her dad’s BMW that morning, dressed to the nines, nose in the air, and then at lunchtime proceeded to eat fattening food? Like, total disconnect.

Claire was thin and her palate clearly refined, hence the sushi lunch that was so out of place in a high school library, even in the upscale Chicago ’burbs, that she had to explain what it was to the other students. The brand promise as the pretty, popular rich kid would have been broken if she had indulged in off-the-shelf, processed lunch fare.

Don’t call it a logo — call it a brand identity. This will

reinforce that it’s much more than a visual symbol.

INTERNAL CommuNICATIoNS TIP

How does a 40+ year-old children’s television show remain relevant while continuing to captivate new generations of young viewers? By staying true to its brand promise year after year, decade after decade, family after family.

Sesame Street, the PBS staple that revolutionized children’s television in the late ’60s with its educational curriculum and puppet-driven character sketches, has a brand identity … sure … but when we think of Sesame Street, a logo doesn’t pop to mind — a puppet does. Just ask Mitt Romney; he knows all too well what happens when you challenge Big Bird in the court of public opinion. Sesame Street’s rambunctious brand ambassadors (read: parents of multiple generations of young people who learned to spell, count and share thanks to the lessons of Big Bird and his friends) come calling, and they tend to win.

Why? Because the series has consistently delivered on its brand promise to deliver engaging, entertaining, educational content for more than four decades. In return, its audience is loyal and committed — in 2012 it became the first nonprofit to reach one billion (!) views on YouTube.

A Promise Endures: Sesame Street

CaSE STudy

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A brand is a promise, but be careful not to overpromise.

Claire was lucky: She controlled what made it into her lunch bag. But whether or not you’re living up to your brand promise isn’t always a matter of communications.

Sometimes, communicators are saying all the right things, but the programs and ideas coming out of the organization just don’t live up to what’s being said.

Sounds tricky.

If you’ve been in this situation, it likely means you need to do some homework. To avoid overpromising and setting yourself up for brand disappointment, make sure you understand what your organization already does well, what it doesn’t and what it wants to do better.

Let’s think about Claire again … Even though her brand was defined by the popular, rich-kid stereotype, we learn that’s really not who she wants to be, at least not all the time. She wants to let her hair down and live a little. It’s clear her brand needs to evolve.

In real life, that means that a brand needs to capture both our aspirations and our reality. It needs to reflect what you aspire to be and do, what you are really doing and how your audiences perceive the whole thing. And let’s not forget that, since all of these matter to a lot of different people, the process of defining your brand needs to involve INTERNAL staff and stakeholders as well as EXTERNAL ones.

Any way you slice it, that promise you made matters a whole heck of a lot.

oNCE uPoN A TImE . . . Good mission statements:

If content is queen (or king), storytelling is the guy next door who is engaging, imperfect and prefers conversations over speeches. Many of today’s communicators believe strongly that great brands and storytelling go hand-in-hand. We train grassroots folks on persuasive storytelling all the time, encouraging them to tell their tale from the heart while keeping their main message in mind. You can think about your organization telling its story the same way.

Stories evoke emotional response — the idea being that when brands connect with audiences on an emotional level, that connection is more solid and lasting than it would be otherwise. In a twist on the brand promise dynamic, Johan Sachs in his book Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell (and Live) the Best Stories Will Rule the Future, looks to ancient mythology in showing how great stories — complete with heroes and villains — helps organizations succeed. Says Sachs, “Today’s best marketers are creating cause and brand loyalty by telling stories that deliver a pattern of meaning for a society in need of just that.”

Nonprofits take note! (Sachs, 2012).

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How many of you are nodding your heads right now? We all have this problem, right — we want to be and do amazing things; we’re trying to change the world, after all. But our programs can only go so far. It’s a struggle, but one that can be solved with a strong brand that defines who you are, what you want to be and how you’re going to get there.

Of course, once you know who you ARE, then you also know who you ARE NOT. Think about Breakfast Club brain Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall). He was comfortable in his role as an intellectual, which explains his participation in academic, not social clubs, and his explanation that he had a fake ID “so I can vote.”

Seriously, who didn’t laugh out loud at that one?

The same is true for organizations — clarity matters!

At Harvard, a bunch of super smart Brian Johnsons (aka researchers) found that a brand plays a special role among nonprofit organizations in particular. After talking with organizations around the country, they concluded that, when a brand is positioned clearly and consistently, staff — who are already proud and have drunk the Kool-Aid — rally around it. This tight-knit persona builds trust in the organization and can even increase its social impact. Check out their model, called The Role of Brand Cycle (Kylander, 2011).

When your brand is tight, a few things happen — communications look the same, they sound

The role of Brand Cycle

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the same and employees embrace the organization’s purpose. Here’s the real kicker: creativity and innovation are unleashed. The brand boundaries serve as the box, and they give staff the license to think outside it (Ind and Watt, 2005).

If you remember, even Brian cut loose in one memorable scene ….

Let’s think about it this way: A brand promise articulates what audiences can expect from their experience with an organization and describes the value that this represents to them (Smith & Wheeler, 2002).

Some of the best brand promises are only six to nine words, such as Google’s “Provide access to the world’s information in one click,” or the Ritz Carlton’s “Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.”

Market your brand promise internally (think pep rallies, contests, kitchen bulletin boards — yes, we said pep rally and we mean it!). You want employees to know it well so they can act on it with confidence and at every possible opportunity.

That promise can even serve as a litmus test for all of your work: Is this what we promised we would do?

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Branding — The Starting PointSo, maybe you’ve just completed your five-year strategic plan. Or your PR team is working on a communications plan to guide your outreach. Or you’ve just hired a hot-shot social marketer who is going to make those behavior-change goals a reality. Maybe your boss hands you a marketing plan and a pile of audience research, then says, “I feel like our messaging is all over the place. Fix it.”

Communications people problems, right? Or maybe branding people problems … maybe both! That’s a debatable point.

Either way, the real question is what the heck do you do about it? It’s a question we get a lot. Our answer: Start with the common thread.

At the heart of all of these communications fire drills is one common need — to clarify your purpose. No matter what the drill of the day may be, we would all be well-served to start any and every communications project — including branding — at the beginning by defining the goal and audiences.

You’ve already got that on paper? Rock on. You’re ready to kick off your branding project, whatever it may look like.

If you don’t, don’t worry. Taking the time now to clarify what your organization is trying to do and who it is trying to reach will prove worthwhile. Taking even more time to make sure everyone agrees — leadership, staff, the board of directors, members, donors — will prove invaluable. Without buy-in here, you’ll have a lot of trouble getting your branding work off the ground later on.

And we feel we should warn you that when you get all of your stakeholders around the table to talk about goals and audiences, they’re likely to bring some baggage with them. We are even willing to bet that a few will come with their own plan for what should be happening at your organization. Maybe it’s a strategic communications plan or a social marketing plan. Maybe it’s a donor relations roadmap. Or a content strategy.

Start by defining

ThE GoAL ANd AudIENCES.

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All of these plans, processes and protocols have the potential to make heads explode, putting a damper on your branding plans from day one.

Our advice: Before the plans come out, explain what you’re trying to accomplish. You’re laying a foundation that will hold all of these plans up. You’re not competing; you’re providing the glue that will hold all of this important work together.

Here is a simple clarification that we like to use:

Plans map out what you are going to do. Branding is designed to get at who you ARE, as well as who you want to BE — and remind others of that over time.

Make sure it’s clear that this process is about defining what you are and what you are not as an organization. Just like people, organizations need to find themselves before they can set a course of action. And that process of finding yourself, put simply, is the process of establishing a strong brand.

Still not sure that strengthening your brand will solve all of your problems? Consider this. A strong brand can help organizations:

1. Effectively communicate their value propositions;2. Attract more supporters, constituents, board members and staff;3. Motivate audiences to share messages for them; and4. Help define a clear path for marketing and PR efforts (Holland, 2006).

Since branding should be a foundational exercise, doing it well can help an organization address a multitude of issues — just like that infamous Saturday spent at Shermer High in 1984 did for each member of the Breakfast Club.

Branding is about putting your best foot forward, then building relationships that grow stronger over time. Like Claire and the rest of the Breakfast Club crew … after one meaningful interaction, their lives will never be the same.

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The makings of a strong brand

Branding is one of the most jargon-rich, process-laden pursuits communication pros can undertake. The good news … it’s hard to go wrong. Many of the processes out there can be helpful in getting at the nature of your brand and are rooted in research and experience. What matters is what you put into it. Because branding exists at the nexus of emotion and logic, people are inextricably linked to the branding process.

Let’s revisit the crew at Shermer High. Would Claire have found her more playful side without the help of quintessential “bad boy” John Bender ( Judd Nelson)? Would the disheveled Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy) have connected with her inner princess without the Claire makeover? Would we have learned just how hard life can be for teens from all walks of life without their arguments about preconceived notions and misunderstandings?

By opening up to each other and sharing their deepest, darkest secrets, they — and we — learn more about themselves than they ever imagined possible.

While we don’t encourage quite the level of rebellion touted by John Bender on this journey of self-exploration, there is something to be said about getting real about the things your organization does well, the things it doesn’t and the places where you want it to improve. And there is even more to be said about unpacking and getting to know staff values that often reflect the personality of the organization. It’s the people that make the organization tick, after all.

A NoTE oN INTERNAL BRANdING

It takes a village to grow a strong, healthy brand. In fact, the buzzword “internal branding” sort of makes us scratch our heads — of course internal folks are part of the process! They’re the ones getting the message out there in everything they do … email marketing, presentations, campaigns, member services and more!

And we beg you; please don’t forget about leadership. They are your most important internal audience. Get their buy-in first, but also involve the rest of your staff in your branding project early — they’ll be your brand ambassadors later on. Get input early and often (remember our advice about the goal and audience?), convene a brand working group and communicate what you’re learning, changing and doing.

Getting everyone on board will help in the long run. We promise. If you do it right, you’ll create a messaging machine.

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But how do you get to those deep, dark secrets and introspective revelations? Some are arrived at via exercises that are pretty fun, involving sticky notes, sketching, ropes courses and other things that give staff an opportunity to be honest and to bond. Others get there through research — the more you can do, through surveys, discussion groups and focus groups and analyses (SWOT, situational and media) to better understand what people think about your brand, the better. Don’t ever stop learning.

Once you’ve got all of that data, sorting through it can be confusing. What are you actually looking for? The ideas, phrases, words, emotions and concepts that make up your brand.

dESIGN ThINkING

Sounds deep, right? Some people think it was an approach designed by Post-it to increase sales (if you’ve never done it before, it often involves a lot of multi-colored sticky notes). But what is it really?

Design thinking — like so much else in cause communications — was born in the corporate space and created to help businesses develop products with the customer at the helm. It can be used to conceive of, develop and launch a brand. Some argue that everything in the brand process is part of design thinking. Developing the idea is design thinking, creating the content is design thinking, marketing the brand is design thinking.

What sets design thinking apart is that it leads with the customer — or in our case, the audience. It taps into our insight and knowledge (based on research, please) about the audience to produce feasible ideas and strategies. These ideas, combined with technological capabilities and an applicable strategy, lead to increased value for the audience and new market opportunity (Brown, 2008).

Click here to check out Stanford University’s d.school Institute of Design steps to design thinking to help you get started.

Never design thunk

before?

No problem!

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Buzzwords aside, your brand consists of several key assets:

A promise (what you are committing to; remember, we talked about that)Touchstones (the things that keep you honest with yourself )mission/vision/value statements (those flagship statements about your organization)A positioning statement or elevator speech (you have 10 seconds to explain what you do — go!)messages (I just stopped the elevator … tell me a little more)An identity (the obvious stuff ... logo, tagline, color palette, official typefaces, etc.)

And before you’re done, all of these assets should be compiled into a brand platform that serves as a handy songsheet and should be referenced in all you do. (Speaking of songsheets, if you hum Simple Minds’ “Don’t You Forget About Me” as you work, you’ll be in great company.)

defining touchstones

Since we already delivered on the promise piece of all this, let’s jump right into the touchstones.

Philip Kotler, considered to be the father of modern marketing, teaches that brands have six levels of meaning: 1) attributes, 2) benefits, 3) values, 4) culture, 5) personality and 6) user. We call these brand touchstones. According to Kotler, a brand is deeply emotional. It has personality that connects with people and a culture that aligns with those of the people who interact with it. We love brands because they make us FEEL something (Kotler, Pfoertsch, & Michi, 2006).

Remember the feeling you had in “The Breakfast Club” when Allison explains why she is the way she is? “My home life is unsatisfying.” Teens everywhere yelled, “Me too!” One sentence captured that universal teen theme eloquently.

See? Common ground. The Breakfast Club. Genius, that John hughes.

The brand touchstones are identified by staff and leadership and help guide those who are conceiving or refining the brand to make sure that choices being made fit the group. Are we edgy, or conservative? Are we globally focused, or is our mission to change things in our own backyard?

6 LEvELS oFBRAND MEANING

user

personality

culture

values

benefits

attributes123456

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Flying your flagship high

While touchstones provide the feeling, the vision provides the aspirational context for a brand, letting you know where it wants to go and what it wants to be when it grows up. But it doesn’t tell you how it is going to get there. That’s the job of the mission. It says how an organization will act on its vision and what path it will take to get there.

A strong mission also includes some values, which are important defining markers of an organization. There are a lot of reasons to want to save the world, some you may agree with and some you may not.

Values form the code by which the brand lives, acting as a benchmark to measure behaviors and performance (Welch, 2005). Put in cause-related terms; if your organization has values that are out of synch with your audiences’ values, you will have a hard time getting them on board with your change-the-world vision.

Remember how Claire couldn’t relate to Bender having more than one girlfriend? And how he couldn’t understand why Claire and Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez) let their peer group tell them what to do and who to like?

Different values. That’s why each of the students in “The Breakfast Club” struggled to find common ground at the beginning: Their values were so vastly different that it was difficult to know where to start relating to each other.

Alas, their disappointing parents brought them together. In the end they all had one shared value: They would not turn out like their parents.

Positioning yourself well

So far, it sounds like we’ve got a bunch of mumbo jumbo put together that makes US feel good about who we are and what we do. But how do we help other people understand?

Enter the positioning parts of the brand. Yes, there are two.

dISSECTING ThE mISSIoN STATEmENT

Good mission statements:

• Describe your organization’s purpose;

• Tell how you get there;• State or suggest your organization’s

values; • And if possible, clarify who benefits

from your work.

See if your mission statement covers these areas; the values part, in particular, often gets left out. If you’ve got these covered, then make sure you eliminate any jargon and ensure your statement is written so it’s memorable (Radtke, 1998).

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Even though positioning statements and elevator speeches are often confused or used interchangeably, each serves its own purpose. A positioning statement illustrates how your organization is perceived — or how you want it to be perceived — in the minds of your audience. It is the lens with which your audience views you. It should be concise and directive, and clearly articulate what sets your organization apart, as well as the benefits you bring to the “change-the-world” fight.

Take a look at Starbucks. Its positioning statement is written to explain what Starbucks provides beyond coffee — they view themselves as a place where people can go to take a break from life, treat themselves and unwind. The actual positioning statement: “There is nothing else like the Starbucks experience, a real indulgence, every day.”

To clearly articulate the Breakfast Club’s purpose, Brian might have kicked off the essay to Mr. Vernon with a statement like this: “The Breakfast Club meets at Saturday detention to uncover the real people hiding behind the stereotypes.”

So, what’s the difference between that and an elevator speech? Whereas the positioning statement defines your purpose, the elevator speech promotes it … quickly … in the time it would take to ride to the 15th floor of the building where you’re going to pitch a big donor to support your cause. It should be short, to the point and understandable to anyone, even someone without background about your organization or the cause you’re fighting for (Olinger, 2009).

Back to Starbucks. Its positioning statement explains the experience; its elevator pitch connects that experience with the unique value that the Starbucks brand brings to coffee — a commitment to people and community. “Starbucks is out to inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”

Recruiting more kids to join her voluntarily for Saturday detention the next week, Allison might say: “The Breakfast Club is a place where people like you and me can get together, talk and find ourselves. You might just walk away with a few new friends!”

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What’s there to say about it all anyway?

So you’ve made your promise, got your feelings squared away, your purpose is defined and you have what you need to convince others to believe. That person in the elevator just pushed the stop button. They want to hear more. What do you do now?!

don’t worry. You’ve got messages for this.

Messages help us articulate all of the elements of our brand in all of the places where people might interact with it — in social media, at events, in traditional media, just walking around town, in that notorious elevator. And just like values, there are a lot of ways that different people might talk about the same things. Having clear messages gets everyone on the same page and reinforces consistency, which can help set us apart from others doing similar work and make us memorable to our audiences (Tyrell-Smith, 2011).

Positioning a City for Success: Enid, Oklahoma

The City of Enid, okla. — a community of nearly 50,000 residents — is a bustling cultural and commercial hub for people living in the northwest section of the state. Despite its rich history and evolution from a true frontier town to a city with diverse neighborhoods and populations, Enid lacked a brand that reflected its modern values.

In September 2011, civic leaders from the Enid Convention & Visitors Bureau, Enid Regional Development Alliance, Greater Enid Chamber of Commerce, Main Street Enid and the City of Enid — called Enid 1st Group — embarked on a rebranding effort designed to bring the city’s brand up to speed with what it offered residents, businesses and tourists alike.

CaSE STudy

The team focused on identifying the city’s attributes: original, vibrant and boundless, with a spirit that is both adventurous and entrepreneurial. They used research including survey data, historical facts and city demographics to fill out their perspectives and inform the positioning statement that followed: “Enid is a community overflowing with boundless opportunities, building an original heritage, and pulsing with a vibrant quality of life” (Friesen Design, 2012).

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As you create messages that reinforce your brand, remember that they must be personable and genuine, reflecting your values and connecting with your audience. But they should also respond to a challenge. Often, the branding process — especially the research we do to figure out key elements of the brand — reveals some challenges. Maybe it’s lack of delivery on the promise to one audience in particular. Or maybe it’s an audience that believes something slightly different about what you do. Messages can help clarify inconsistencies among audiences and define the benefits and values that you bring to the table.

Instead of challenge/solution, think of it as challenge/we’ve got a message for that!

Finding your identity

If you’re someone who answered “Yes!” to our pop quiz about the meaning of a brand earlier, the time has finally come. We can talk about that logo … or more accurately, the brand identity.

Self-identified Breakfast Club criminal John Bender really rocked his bad boy brand identity by sporting all the right attributes — chains, untucked flannel and combat boots (remember: those particular fashion choices wouldn’t be mainstream until the grunge period, circa 1990), unkempt hair, the rebellious earring — which all added up to the “I don’t care what you think” persona. At a glance, you knew what he stood for, and sorta against.

The others bought it … for the most part. But Claire looked deeper to see a vulnerable young man that was just as hungry for acceptance (branding!) and relationships (branding!) as she was. He had a new audience! (Cue the neck kiss in the storage closet.) Ah, high school.

If Claire was the kiss-and-tell kind, Bender’s brand as the “anti-richie” would have never recovered. But she had some brand equity at stake, too.

But how does flannel translate to your organization’s look and feel? Having a cohesive brand identity can be the glue that keeps your organization focused, polished and on track to achieve its goals. One study even found that nonprofit staffers were more apt to use their brand identities consistently than their for-profit counterparts, perhaps because they were found to better understand their organization’s strategy and care more about its image (Van den Bosch, de Jong, & Elving, 2006).

a cohesive brand identity can keep your organization

focused, polished and on track.

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And let’s not downplay the value of brand guidelines. This collection of typefaces, colors, rules and tips for the application of your brand identity is sometimes fondly known as the “brand book” but is always known as the place to go if you have a question about color use, logo placement, font preferences, etc. (McClung, 2009). If your organization wants brand discipline (which it should; continuity and consistency are essential to effective brand management), brand guidelines are the pathway to get there.

When Lindsay Moss established the Sydney Moss Fund in 2009 to raise money for research and community awareness of a rare and serious liver disease called biliary atresia (BA) that her daughter was born with, she knew she had a lot of competition in the “cause” field. The Alexandria, Va., resident really pounded the pavement to get the word out about her new endeavor and launched a fundraising 5K race as her chief dollar-drumming mechanism. Thanks to her local connection, the community rallied behind her cause and her family with numerous in-kind and corporate sponsors. Shops ranging from cafés to dry cleaners to exercise studios donated their window space to feature BA5K fliers.

The race had more than 300 participating runners in the first year and posted a larger than expected contribution to Johns Hopkins University Medical Center, where Sydney Moss was being treated for BA. However, when her husband’s job was transferred to Atlanta just two years later, she was stuck. The BA5K would have to move, but without her local appeal, how would she keep the momentum going?

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Branding gave her the answer.

Lindsay worked with a PR agency to design a logo and website — pro-bono — for the Sydney Moss Fund and the BA5K. With a solid brand identity under her belt, she had the polish she needed to recruit Georgia-based sponsors to keep the race going in Atlanta. The BA5K brand may have relocated, but thanks to a healthy development bottom line, the quality of the event maintained and more than 150 runners participated in the race’s Atlanta debut.

According to Lindsay, “It’s heartening to see that if you have a solid brand and a good cause, no matter your community, you’re going to have a strong following!”

A Case for a Strong Brand Identity: The Ba5K

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So if it’s all about consistency, what happens when you start talking about changing your logo — a practice often referred to broadly as rebranding?

“But I don’t like royal blue.” “Sans serif fonts are too modern for us.” “That looks nothing like a drop of water to me.”

Sound familiar?

If folks are unhappy with the logo, there’s no shame in asking why. Sometimes it’s a personal connection they have with an element that has been used, and it’s unlikely you’ll be able to tweak in a way that pleases everyone equally. You might find that there is nothing wrong with the logo at all … in fact, what’s irksome is a disconnect within the brand touchstones or brand promise. Other times, the reasons are quite valid, like it resembles a competitor’s brand too closely.

Feedback like this is essential, because it can uncover larger issues such as dissatisfaction with program delivery or other aspects that go beyond the identity itself … issues that actually define the identity. Without this feedback, you risk swapping out a blue, putting a Band-Aid on the problem and fueling a tenuous brand relationship.

Just like you shouldn’t fear asking more questions about why someone wants to toss the logo out with the brand guidelines, don’t fear saying, “No — we can’t do that actually.” Changing your brand identity is a big decision, and even minor changes communicate that the organization is in flux.

Don’t you wonder whether after the day of detention at Shermer High, Allison maintained the makeover look, or simply piled the eyeliner back on? Would her transformation stick? An interesting conundrum, since her brand evolution to girl-next-door certainly caught the attention of Breakfast Club athlete Andrew Clark — a new dating audience for her! But would she be comfortable in this new skin for the long haul?

For some, sure — that change would feel good enough to keep working at it. But for others, change can be a bad idea. The ‘80s not only gave us “The Breakfast Club” but also New Coke, remember? And you have to suppose that if Allison showed up at school Monday morning sporting her cleaned-up look, she would have alienated her current social circle, which she may or may not have been prepared to do.

don’t fear saying, “No —

we can’t do that actually.”

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So think carefully before throwing brand equity out the door with that older brand identity. Make sure your decision is rooted in comprehensive research and the evidence says it’s time for a new look. Tread lightly … you might gain a new look, but you might just lose the perceptions and reputation you have built around your brand over time (Schmid-Preissler, 2005). Because consciously or not, you have spent significant resources to build that brand, and making a big change or starting over can be costly in more ways than one.

Another part of your brand identity is your tagline, or a short phrase that is often paired with the logo to do what a symbol or illustration alone cannot. Done right, taglines offer an incredible opportunity to share what an organization does in a compelling and differentiated way. But what makes a good tagline?

Taglines should be eight words or less, be jargon-free, be written in compelling language and share how you’re different from your “competitors” (Schwartz, n.d.).

To illustrate, here’s what the taglines for the Breakfast Club members might have looked like:

Bender: “I’m me, and screw you.”Andrew: “Performance is everything.”Claire: “Live to be popular.”Brian: “A+ or bust.”Allison: “Nothing. Better. To. Do.”

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Branding AppliedSo now we know why branding is important for nonprofits and government agencies, have a better idea of what branding is, understand the properties of a brand and have a few tools to see how branding can help with specific challenges. Right?

But how exactly do you tackle it as an organization?

Here, we offer a step-by-step process to help you tackle the branding beast. We’ve tried to boil it down to focus on the key assets and engage staff and stakeholders along the way. For the entry point, we began with one of the most common kinds of brand challenges out there facing nonprofits and agencies: An organization whose brand needs honing and/or better maintenance because of a pressing challenge.

Step 1: Establish a brand manager and, if possible, a brand workgroup.

The brand manager for this exercise should have the ear of leadership as well as experience in communications, marketing, advertising or PR, and ideally will continue as brand manager for the organization after the project is complete. Having one person who “polices” the brand over time ensures consistency. If you are working with an agency, you may get away with having the folks you assemble for your brand workshop serve as your working group.

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Step 2: Articulate the problem you’re trying to solve.

So the Board thinks awareness is low. Why is that important? They may say that they are concerned that the organization is not the go-to resource when the media covers their issue, but upon further probing, realize that the real problem is that donations are flat.

Step 3: Loop in internal folks.

Give staff, stakeholders, Board members and partners fair warning about the pending branding exercise and why you’re doing it now. Allow people to ask questions and be prepared to justify the cost.

Step 4: Identify your goal.

If think you are headed toward a rebrand, write down the goal and audiences for the exercise at hand. If embarking on a longer-term brand maintenance program, the goal may be a larger one for your organization as a whole that is pulled from a strategic plan. Not sure how to pick a goal? Check out our Purple Paper on Evaluating Social Change.

Step 5. Figure out who your audiences are and what they think.

If your audience is parents, does that mean parents nationwide or just in certain regions? How about those in states that have thriving corporate or industrial sectors, or that contain major media markets such as New York and Illinois? Parents of any age, or those whose kids are a bit older and who are further along in their earning potential? If this is looking like an all-too-familiar strategic communications planning effort, sit tight — the good stuff is coming up.

Look at what research did for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. When the organization was founded in 1949, blood cancers had a nearly 100 percent fatality rate — a call to action to be sure, but not a very hopeful fundraising message. They needed to claim victories and they needed to show that the research and programs they were funding were making a difference. They needed to change how they were talking about their work and ultimately their brand, but they didn’t want to lose support in the end.

They asked their audience what they should say. And what they learned was amazing — their audience told them to take credit! Tell the world that, thanks to LLS, lives are being saved every day.

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How does a 60+ year-old organization keep its brand and its successes relevant to current and prospective donors? By making a bold statement designed to capture attention.

At least that’s what the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) did. With the help of an intense research process, they launched a hopeful new branding initiative called “Someday Is Today,” which implies a cure for blood cancers is just around the corner. This brand was a perfect fit because it could serve as an umbrella to capture all LLS projects and campaigns, since it aligned directly with the organization’s decades-old brand promise: to cure cancer, now.

To get there, LLS conducted internal and external stakeholder research to better understand what drives its audiences, i.e., donors and volunteers, to give both their time and money. They learned that donor

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satisfaction is driven by impact — the more people feel that they are making a difference, the more they will engage. Likewise, transparency within charitable giving is lacking, with most donors having little or no knowledge of where their money goes.

Based on this research, LLS developed proof points and factoids about its impact — from advances in research to changes in policy — all of which illustrate the value of the organization to donors and volunteers. And in Q4 of 2012, it launched “Someday Is Today” with a research-informed brand manifesto that tells their story of success yet reinforces the fact that much more work needs to be done.

Creatively, LLS took a leap with messaging such as “We can see the end of cancer from here,” and an online ad featuring a future newspaper headline declaring “Cancer Cured!” The latter generated national attention in media outlets such as The New York Times and Adweek (Elliott, 2013).

According to Lisa Stockmon, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at LLS, “when you put it in front of them [our audience], it resonated with them … They said, ‘Yes, there are advances, and LLS is working toward cures.’”

Let Your Audience Decide What’s Right for Them: The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

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Step 6. Conduct a brand audit.

That Saturday in the Shermer library was the equivalent of a personal brand audit. Who knew Mr. Vernon was a communications pro?!

What is a brand audit you ask? It’s a tool to help organizations analyze their brands by reviewing current brand properties, talking with audiences, and assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (called a SWOT analysis). The audit should yield recommendations for improving brand equity, positioning and management, along with related marketing recommendations.

And don’t forget, it needs to be based in research. Does research bring up four-letter words in your mind? Rest easy. We have tips for that, too, in our other Purple Paper on evaluation.

In the most thorough sense (and with a lot of time and money available), a brand audit can include everything from a review of all business plans to an examination of human resource systems (VanAuken, 2007). Whew!

or as with most things, a more streamlined version will do just fine. A brand audit can consist of:

• A branding workshop that starts with “What is a brand?” and includes interactive exercises to get at staff aspirations for and issues with the brand;

• A media analysis that looks at clips over a particular period of time to assess brand penetration and positioning;

• A competitive scan that identifies and profiles organizations with similar missions. This should include thoughts on how the organization at hand is different. Brand Bible Zag (sequel to the other brand Bible, The Brand Gap) says that differentiation is the most important strategy — to be successful, where everyone else is zigging, your organization should zag (Neumeier, 2006);

• A review of any existing audience research;• Stakeholder/member interviews and/or online survey, or the same for another key audience;• A SWoT analysis that draws from all of this feedback; and to conclude,• Branding recommendations and sometimes, a draft brand platform, used as a jumping-off point for

further discussion.

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Step 7. Loop in staff … again.

Whether or not they participated in your initial research, you need to have staff on board. Your brand will flop without boisterous support from your internal stakeholders. At this point, tell them what the research has brought to bear. Show them what the outside world … and their colleagues on staff … think about the organization, what it strives to be, and what it currently does. Put the writing on the wall so they understand the changes that are coming.

Step 8. Adjust your brand identity, but only if you really need to.

Sometimes this work suggests a logo update and name change — but only sometimes. Renaming is a significant job, and we won’t get into that process here. There is a whole someday on dissecting what’s in a name.

Step 9. Position your brand.

A brand refresh can also entail simply re-positioning the organization. By revisiting the brand platform — the brand promise, brand touchstones, positioning statement, elevator speech and messages — you can get your brand back in synch. Once you’re ready, conduct internal training, update your organization’s website and key materials, and plan an event or report release to push your revitalized brand out there. For positioning, we recommend three exercises.

1. First, focus on your brand touchstones and your brand promise. Working as a team, you can capture what you deliver to your audiences, without fail, that is different from the next guy.

2. Second, craft your positioning statement and elevator speech. These will serve as your meta messages and should be woven into all communications.

3. Third, write a few key messages per audience that can be used in more tailored communications.

Step 10. Test your brand.

Since branding is a combination of organizational aspiration and audience perception, testing these properties with your target audiences will give you the confidence that you are, in fact, headed down the right path. But it depends on the property. You may not want feedback on your mission statement beyond your Board, for example. That’s a bit personal.

Hayes Roth, CMO of Landor Associates, says that nonprofits should resist the urge to brand by committee — at the end of the day, someone in leadership needs to make the call (Roth, 2009).

For a logo, tagline or name change, you could circle back to those who participated in your stakeholder surveys and ask for feedback on the finalists. For positioning, you could send an

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online survey to partners to see which language resonates most, or gather feedback on any of these via your Facebook page. You could even send those who provide feedback a link to a $5 coupon for an online retailer. Your options for testing are limitless, but remember, we have a resource for that!

Step 11. Launch your brand internally first.

This can be fun. You want to gather all staff and have an exciting “reveal” of the new brand. You can use this gathering to hand out new business cards and distribute stationery. You can share the brand guidelines — then train staff on using them at another time. This is celebratory after all!

In all the fun, don’t forget to do the work. Staff need to feel good about the brand but they also need to be able to use it, so train them on the brand itself (you can even do talking points outlining the why now/why these colors/etc., so they’re prepared for conversations with external audiences). Likewise, be sure the brand guidelines are understood.

Most important is to get all staff comfortable with your new messages and able to recite your brand positioning with ease. Remember that all staff are communicators, and that getting them all to describe the organization the same way is job No. 1.

It’s a job that pays dividends. Think of organizations such as the YMCA (now the Y), where front desk folks around the country are trained to answer the phone by quoting the national brand promise (or they used to, anyway).

Step 12. Launch your brand externally, too!

This is really important. Every rebrand is an opportunity to remind your audiences of why you exist and boast some success. Changing your brand and then just displaying it without any explanation is at best a missed opportunity and at worst sparks confusion within your audiences. You could simply send out a well-designed email blast sporting the new brand to all your supporters and post across social media, or you could time your launch to coincide with your annual conference or another announcement that you will be doing media relations around anyway.

Foundations and other grantmakers are generally supportive of branding efforts if they’re done right, and if you have an involved grant officer, he or she may be willing to give you feedback. Policymakers may be a little more difficult to nail down for something like this, but their staffers can be motivated to participate. Testing does not need to be fancy; it only needs to yield results.

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You could roll out your new brand at a reception for your supporters and include a silent auction. A public launch party that shows off the brand could help create a greater and deeper connection with the organization’s audience (Vomhof, 2013).

And just to be clear … launching a brand isn’t about having a big party with collateral featuring your brand identity plastered to the walls. In today’s fast-paced media climate, it’s about creating content that consistently delivers on your brand promise and connects with your audience.

Think about the Nike Foundation. Nike itself is a swoosh and a sneaker. We all know that. But the Nike Foundation needed to differentiate and connect audiences directly with its mission of women’s advocacy worldwide. Enter “The Girl Effect” — an amazing B2B initiative (they built on something they already knew how to do well) designed to give young women worldwide a voice in the advocacy and policy change that would help them reach their potential.

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Content is the Branding Queen: The girl Effect

In 2004, the Nike Foundation was created with a goal of ending worldwide intergenerational poverty. Its mission focused on helping adolescent girls worldwide finish school. Research showed them that by helping these young girls get an education, they could be empowered and become the building blocks to change communities and reduce poverty and rates of chronic disease like HIV.

But how do you go about getting influencers engaged? How do you show them that adolescent girls need to have a voice on the global agenda?

The Foundation leveraged their business strengths gleaned from their Nike prowess and created an all-encompassing campaign brand. “The Girl Effect” launched in 2008 with a video, a website, YouTube channel, Facebook page and online fundraising platform. The B2B initiative targeted a specific audience of thought leaders, politicians and organizations within the development community with a clear call to action: Spread the word. And with the help of oprah Winfrey, they did.

By october 2011, the effort had garnered more than a quarter of a million Facebook “likes,” more than 3 million YouTube views and almost 20,000 followers on Twitter.

The result? A brand that has become the voice for a movement, given visibility to a foundation and created opportunities for young women worldwide (Kylander, 2011).

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The bakers dozen. Maintain your brand.

In her article Brand Equity and Brand Maintenance, Christina Schmid-Preissler (2005) explains that developing, shaping, promoting and maintaining a brand is a never-ending project (this originally said “task,” but for the right person, brand maintenance is more fun than that word implies!). Brand maintenance is about brand quality, equity, consistency and ongoing evaluation.

Your brand manager — who should have strong attention to detail — has his or her work cut out for them at this point. This person is not only the one primarily in charge of enforcing the brand guidelines … the Mr. Vernon-type disciplinarian comes to mind here … but also the one in charge of keeping the brand alive and doing well … disciplinarian and nurturer rolled up into one. Maybe those “out-of-touch” parents were more connected than their Breakfast Club teens gave them credit for.

In addition to disciplinarian and nurturer, your brand manager is also a doer. This person should initiate tasks such as coming up with a plan for revising key organization or agency digital and print materials and revising staff email

signatures to highlight the new brand name and tagline (text only, though, please — graphics will morph into attachments). And they should be empowered to police all uses of the brand.

Think of the closing copy of a press release — called the boilerplate — as the perfect opportunity to share new messages; the brand manager would ensure the new boilerplate is used, every time. With someone constantly monitoring the brand and its competition, and being proactive when change is necessary, it is easier to maintain brand image and reputation.

Think about how Brian, Claire, Andrew, Bender and Allison sign the essay at the end of the movie. They established an entirely new collective brand: The Breakfast Club. Did they live it? Well, that’s a question for another day.

Brand equity is a set of assets (and liabilities) linked to a

brand’s name and symbol that adds to (or subtracts from) the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or its

customers (Aaker, 1996).

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Putting It All Together: A kick-off Questionnaire

Feeling inspired yet? Ready to dive into your organization’s culture and pull out a strong brand that will motivate internal audiences and keep external audiences engaged and focused on your mission? We thought so!

To help you get started, here is a list of questions designed to help you get your project off the ground. Good luck! And don’t forget to send a postcard from your journey!

• What problem are you looking to solve through a branding exercise?• What is the most important thing your organization is trying to achieve in the next

two years?• Who are the most important people that you need to talk to in achieving that goal?• Do you have any research that shows how these people think and feel about your

organization?• What’s the most important thing you want them to know about your organization?

Is there consensus around this among your staff and leadership?• How old are your mission/vision statements (if you have them)? Do they describe what

you do in a compelling way that differentiates you from others in your space?• When was your brand identity (logo, colors, tagline, etc.) last refreshed? Does it reflect

what people think and feel about you and what you want people to know about your organization?

• Do you have any other brand assets such as a brand promise statement, positioning statement, brand platform or messaging platform? How about brand guidelines? Are they current?

• Do you have any mechanisms in place for training staff to communicate your brand consistently?

• What does brand maintenance look like at your organization?• Most important, are you ready to get your brand on?

Some Parting Advice

A brand, like a relationship, is a living entity — and therefore never “done.” Just as a significant other wouldn’t wait 20 years to say “We’re still good, right?”, organizations should not wait to gauge how their own relationships are faring. Infidelity takes place with brand relationships too.

Five years is a good increment to check on a brand’s continued relevance and vibrancy (repeat steps 1–12 above). Audience research should be repeated yearly and the brand platform updated more frequently than that.

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If John Hughes were still with us and contemplating doing another movie about high school, it’s possible, even likely, that he would do his research to uncover the issues that teens are dealing with now. (Would they really be so different?)

But what likely wouldn’t change is the depth he would show in his characters, because like teenagers, brands are complicated, in a good way. His Breakfast Club quintet challenged viewers to reconsider their assumptions about young people who are good athletes, or wear dark eyeliner, or have designer clothes or brains, or skip school and listen to heavy metal.

In the simplest terms, and the most convenient definitions: Be clear about who you are, and who you want to be. Then make sure that’s how others see you.

And remember … “don’t you forget about me … don’t don’t don’t don’t …”

Sincerely yours,

The Branding Club

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Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/johnecooper/zag-brand-strategy

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Page 4: Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images. Retrieved from Huffington Post blog. April 2, 2012.

Page 22: Video still from Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s online ad for “Someday Is Today” campaign. Retrieved from Adweek website.

Page 26: Photo retrieved from GirlEffect.org.